Angelos Merges is a Swiss-Greek visual artist born in 1989 in Chios, Greece. He received an Integrated Master from Athens School of Fine Arts in the direction of Painting in 2020 and a Master in Fine Arts from Zürcher Hochschule der Künste in 2023. He works between Zurich, Switzerland and Athens, Greece.

Angelos Merges’ painting compositions deal with current social issues while exploring painting strategies that correspond to the post-analog era. Having grown up on the small island of Chios near the Turkish borders, draws on his observations of the social changes caused by the economic crisis and the influx of refugees to the Aegean islands. During the last 4 years of residing in Zurich, themes of atomization, social discordance and displacementband matters of inclusion/exclusion have taken center stage in his artistic practice.  Strongly influenced by recent events that reshaped the socio-political landscape of Greece, his interest focuses on themes that revolve around the notion of liminality, existing in a perpetual state of in-between- as a human condition. In his work, events that occurred over the last decade and personal memories blend, producing a series of images that are interpreted without being explained. Issues that emerged during the economic and refugee crisis meet memories from growing up in the island of Chios, his homeland, creating ambiguous images that oscillate between the intimate and the unfamiliar. The series of paintings form open-ended narratives offering an intermediate space that prompts the viewers to position themselves and to fill in the narrative based on their own perceptions. In the depicted scenes, the exposed and the unseen, the initiated and the outsider seem to be in constant exchange in an attempt to raise questions about shifts of perspective and positions of power. Belonging to a generation of artists who grew up during the time of digital outburst, he approaches painting as a medium that enables the artist to focus on content and method in an era where screen culture holds a dominant role in everyday life. In his practice, Merges uses mainly found low-resolution images as references and employs a painting style that integrates abstract elements within a technique rooted in Alla-Prima. In the majority of his works, the depicted forms are reduced to their most functional components, leaving out most details related to personal or cultural identity. This strategy allows him to explore how figurative painting can connect different cultural viewpoints at a time when identity plays a major role in how we see and describe human beings.